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After living in Korea for shy a decade, I find myself back in England, penalized for my turned back, awaiting a move to Exeter, where I will study an MA in English, with focus on environmental studies. These days I am reading inveterately, owing to my no longer living without the means to buy books & books & books. My reading interest lie in contemporary philosophy, ecology, ecological philosophy, object orientated ontology & speculative realism. These ideas are leaching into my poetry & essays.

Thank you.
I am having a sea change on my approach to my poetry of late. I have been combing through everything I wrote over the last 5 years & discussing with my self if there is anything memorable. I often find it difficult to remember my poems & that became something to consider. I recently read in Burgess’s Enderby, something Enderby says, which is that poetry should be memorable. I think the fictional poet has a point. There is something in being able to recall to mind something & that just wasn’t happening with a lot of the social observation stuff I was attempting & wrote quite a lot of. So I have turned my hand to writing poems where every word matters to give the line a chance at being remembered, because sometimes, you can read something & not try to memorize it, & yet it just sticks. My recent poems are performing this function for me & if they are sticking for me, then they might stick for others. This is odd, I suppose, surely you should remember something of your poems if you wrote them, but I just haven’t been. This just seems to be telling that there might be something un-poetic about them if I can’t bring them to mind.
I have wrote a couple I can recall & have worked on them to improve this. I am finally cobbling together a book of poems that I can say is worth getting out there, something potentially memorable. Look at me with my ego, trying to stain the universe.

You and your (justified) ego make perfect sense! I can tell if a poem of mine is good if I read it aloud to myself and it evokes a physical reaction — usually either tears, goosebumps, or both. I call it “auto-poetica.” Lol! Those are the poems that you remember, because they really do take on a life of their own! If you’re writing those kinds of pieces now, I’d say it means that you’ve come into your own voice. People don’t achieve something like that overnight, or necessarily ever, and completing an MFA doesn’t guarantee it, either. It comes from a deeper place of passion and commitment after a long incubation, if it comes at all. It’s like giving birth! The universe needs to be colored (or stained, as the case may be!) with the memories you’re engendering! ❤️

I think the fear low output/productivity worried me & for a good spell high productivity was very attractive, but I don’t think the approach is beneficial. Yes, out of it there comes from the sheer math of more something good, but it just doesn’t feel right at the moment. I need a challenge & sitting & doing more editorial work to fix the poems into a memorable form, is much harder work & I need this, I need to have the poems I am working on in my head at all times & it is having an odd effect in making me remember other poets’ work. An interesting & welcomed development. Ain’t poetry grand haha.

“ There, I am desperately free and naive; but knowing this oh dear happiness, dear misery; there is no distinctive sign except that one tearing one’s heart, and a smile destined to nobody(...)" E.Stachura